


meridian shudders

by theye



Series: echo chamber [2]
Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Don't copy to another site, F/M, Final Battle, Gen, reyes romance if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-26
Updated: 2019-06-26
Packaged: 2020-05-20 07:00:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19371691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theye/pseuds/theye
Summary: I’m coming for you,Ryder thinks, over and over, a feral mantra, fury building like the tide inside of her throat, the cloying scent of her own bloody nose filling her hardsuit’s oxygen bank and choking her.Try and stop me.





	meridian shudders

**Author's Note:**

> [my sisryder's name is stella](https://66.media.tumblr.com/c2b2e40fb6734383789df9244de79cab/tumblr_pq507wWj1t1u44ak5_500.png), and her brother's name is sage. they've both got green hair and blue eyes. stella hates her father but i love her anyway

When she steps onto the platform in front of the vault’s entrance, Meridian  _shudders._  It’s easy to steel herself and fight through the haze of pain and burning heat reverberating through the base of her skull, get the door open.  _I’m coming,_  Stella thinks, over and over, a feral mantra, fury building like the tide inside of her throat, the cloying scent of her own bloody nose filling her hardsuit’s oxygen bank and choking her.  _Try and stop me._  Behind her, Reyes’ voice urges her forward, and she can hear the chaos on her priority comm channel. It’s far away. It hurts to focus on.

Most of what happens next is muscle memory and blinding  _anger,_  sweeping kett to the side and off the sharp and unfriendly edges of the Jardaan architecture with a biotic burst; there’s no SAM to switch her combat aptitude. There’s no SAM to stop her implant from overloading hotter and hotter each time she raises a blast-shield, each time she unleashes a furious blast of energy from her chest. It’s the first time she’s thanked her father for his rigorous training, up at four thirty on the weekends and and in the Citadel N7 training yard perfecting singularity-pulse-charge until it’s numb in her wrists and she’s fighting in her  _dreams._

Cora takes a hit to the knee and bites her lip through a double-dose of medigel. Reyes grunts and falls back, holding the line and bleeding. She’ll think about that moment later, settled in his lap in a storage room on the Hyperion and dusting her fingers over the bandage on his side while he hides his face under her jaw. They make it through. There’s a moment to breathe, and Liam passes her a stimuli canister to load into an empty medigel slot on her arm and it jolts her headache and swims in her vision when it enters her bloodstream. It doesn’t matter. It can’t stop her.

She thinks she can hear Drack. Stella thinks she can hear her mother.

“Ryder, you have to slow down.”  Cora’s finally had enough, gripping her bicep hard enough that she can feel it even through the stiff plating guarding the shield capacitors stored there. “You have to slow down.”

Stella can see the toll it’s taking on her. She wonders if her face is as pale blue in the eerie light and strained; it might be. She feels a hundred years older, and she feels so heavy she ought to sink right through the walkway and into the conduit sea below them. “I can’t,” she says, and she manages to be  _sorry_  for a moment. Liam is panting into his comm and staring at her. “I can’t. I  _won’t_.”   _I’m coming,_  she wants to say, because don’t they understand? The Archon took SAM. He took her brother.  _Try and stop me._

Liam chews on this. Then he nods at her, and straightens up. “Alright, pathfinder.”

The fight is grueling. Hearing Sage scream is… worse. She watches her twin brother writhe in the chair placed in front of the archon like a child in trouble with the principal. She thinks about when they’d gotten their genetic mods together while she brings a stolen kett sword down through a Wraith, spending fresh Alliance paychecks on green hair and matching tattoos down in the wards. Makes it easier to ignore the  _smell._

But it’s over, eventually, it has to be, she’s stopped fighting the blood dripping out of her nose and the coppery tang is full in her mouth, coating her tongue, and she wants to gag but there’s no time for it. Her breath is coming in painful, heaving gasps when the archon falls and there’s fireflies at the edge of her vision, creeping in.

Sage whimpers. She takes a deep breath. When she approaches the dais and sees the archon’s lifeless eyes peering deep and uncaring into her own, she grits her teeth and licks the blood away from her upper lip, presses down hard on what she suspects is a broken rib. Sage is behind her,  _safe_ , blocked off by the hard black line she makes in her armor.

Stella lifts off her helmet and wipes her upper lip on the hard, cool back of her gloves, and she sets her foot on top of the Archon’s face. It’s good to see it in perfect clarity, without the distance of the visor. She switches on the maglock on the side of her thigh and, with a savage glee, watches her boot go through his skull.

Then she turns, pulls her foot free from what’s left and unrecognizable, and she fumbles with her belt to hook her helmet on a tether hanging at her side.  “Cora,” she says, quietly, and Cora is  _there¸_ helping her lift her limp twin brother into her grip. She settles Sage’s weight on Stella and pretends not to notice Stella’s pain when it puts pressure on her ribcage that she can’t breathe through _._  Stella might love her, in that moment, and Liam too, when he wordlessly slides back under Sage’s left arm and they carry her brother back to daylight together.

“SAM, attempt reconnection to my implant as soon as possible.”  She says, quietly, watching Sage’s head lolling onto Liam’s shoulder. SAM doesn’t say anything, or he does and she can’t hear, and the entrance grows bigger and brighter until she stumbles out and the Tempest team surges forward to grip her, her brother, Cora. Her vision is fuzzy and black at the edges from the burning pain of it all. 

Lexi takes Sage and her gentle blue hands slip into his hair and rub at his implant site to relieve the pressure and heat that have surely built up there and Stella can breathe a little easier, a little deeper. Meridian tastes sweet and warm, and she almost thought she’d never smell wet dirt again after Earth. Her eyes skip over Jaal and Suvi and Peebee and land on Reyes; she sums up a small, tired grin.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> another installment of self-indulgent mass effect stuff no one asked for idk. but u kno what? stella deserves it and this is burning a hole in my docs folder


End file.
